Wednesday November 26, 2014

Hi everyone and welcome to the last week of Fall term! As always, it seems like just yesterday that we were gathered for the welcome party, and here we are in week 12.

First, we are thrilled to announce that two of our graduate students are SSHRC scholarship recipients! Graduate chair John Turri writes, “Ashley Keefner and Sara Weaver each won a Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship (CGS) from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) in the 2013-14 competition. These are extremely competitive and prestigious awards. According to SSHRC’s statistics, in this round, only seven CGSs were awarded to PhD students here at Waterloo and only eighteen were awarded to philosophy PhD students nationally. I know that the entire Waterloo philosophy community joins me in congratulating Sara and Ashley on their amazing accomplishments.”

Sara says:
“The award came as a wonderful surprise and I feel so honored to have my work recognized like this. The scholarship will be an immense help in my studies both in terms of the travel expenses it will help cover and in terms of the extra time I may now have to invest in my research. It is also so thrilling to me to have my proposed thesis, which is a project dear to my heart, be noticed as so worthwhile. A big THANK YOU goes out to Carla Fehr who helped me articulate that proposal in my application!”

And Ashley says:
“The CGS will support my doctoral research on the abilities of animals, both human and non-human, to represent and reason about the mental states of conspecifics. I’m grateful to have won a CGS as it has allowed me to focus more directly on my research. Thanks to everyone who provided feedback on my many drafts, and special thanks to Paul Thagard for his help and guidance.”

Congratulations, both!

In other graduate student news, Ty Branch recently presented a poster at the recent Calgary Summit of Philosophers of Science. She writes “My Poster talked about the potential of near-living architecture to be used as an example of weekly emergent phenomena based on my work over the summer as a result of my MITACS internship.” Check out the abstract here, and you can see a profile of Ty’s internship on our Dept. website. Plus here’s a great picture of Ty with her poster in Calgary!

Ty also presented a paper at the Workshop on Research Agendas in the Societal Aspects of Synthetic Biology in Arizona in early November. This conference was an opportunity for “scholars and practitioners to help articulate research agendas for societal research on synthetic biology… As an emerging
technology with high stakes, uncertain outcomes, and contested definitions
and values, synthetic biology requires systematic inquiry into its ethics,
governance, and desired (or undesired) futures.” She sent along this amazing photo of a concept map produced in one of the conference sessions:

In exciting faculty news, Chris Eliasmith became one of the (80) inaugural members of the RSC College on the weekend in Quebec City. Congratulations Chris!

Doreen Fraser writes that Waterloo was well-represented at the biennial meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association (PSA) in Chicago a few weeks back. Heather Douglas presented a paper co-authored with John Turri and Wesley Buckwalter entitled “Inductive Risk and Data on Values in Science” in a symposium on Naturalism and Values in Science. The session included presentations of evidence about how scientists and the public view the role of values in science, and what implications philosophers of science should take from such evidence. Carla Fehr and Katie Plaisance contributed papers to a special session co-sponsored by The Consortium for Socially Relevant Philosophy of/in Science and Engineering (SRPoiSE) and The Association for Feminist Epistemologies, Methodologies, Metaphysics, and Science Studies (FEMMSS). The session highlighted a successful example of an ongoing collaboration between the two groups which is resulting in refinements to the Toolbox project  for improving communication within interdisciplinary research teams. And I (Doreen) chaired a session of contributed papers responding to her work on axiomatic and heuristic approaches to quantum field theory and was also a member of the Program Committee. This was the largest PSA meeting in the history of the association! All of the abstracts and some of the papers are available at www.philsci.org. As usual, some of the papers will be published in two forthcoming volumes of Philosophy of Science.

On November 16, our very own Shannon Dea was appointed Director of Women’s Studies! Check out all the cool stuff that Department is doing here at their website.

In other faculty news, Shannon  Dea and Carla Fehr participated in the Tech Feminism 101 panel put on by the Women in Computer Science Undergraduate Committee November 13.

And on Nov 17,  Chris Lowry was interviewed  by 570News with respect to the recent court decision allowing a First Nations family to withdraw their child from chemotherapy and treat her cancer using traditional medicine. You can hear the interview here.

Plus, you may remember Heather Douglas was part of a Rotman panel on climate change?  The video from that event has been posted.

In a bit of teaching news, I (Patricia Marino) recently invited McMaster PhD candidate Joanna Zaslow to visit my seminar on Autonomy in Sex and Love to present on her dissertation work on submissive women in Master/slave BDSM relationships and its implications for feminist theories of autonomy. We found her presentation most interesting and had a great discussion. Thank you Joanna!

Don’t forget, as always, you can see more news and check out upcoming events at our Department website.

Thanks for reading!

– Patricia Marino

Wednesday, Sept 24, 2014

Hi everyone, first we have some exciting graduate student news, which is that Micheal McEwan had a successful defense on Tuesday September 23rd of his dissertation “A Study of the Discursive Aspect of Scientific Theorizing and Modeling.” As Mike’s supervisor I want to say yet again: our heartiest congratulations, Mike! Above, Mike celebrates with us post-defense at the grad house.

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Graduate student Jim Jordan says, “I’ve had the privilege of working with Linda Warley (Associate Dean, Graduate Studies), Aimée Morrison (English), Robert Zacharias (postdoctoral fellow in English), Jeff Wilson (Religious Studies), Andrew Thompson (Political Science/BSIA), and Anindya Sen (Economics) on the Faculty’s alternative careers task force. The first fruits of our shared labour, the Arts Graduate Careers portal, is now available to all. The website includes a description of the Department’s most recent non-academic career workshop which was held in April. This is but a start; I’m looking forward to seeing what’s next for the task force.” Excellent news, Jim!

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John Turri writes to report on the Waterloo contingent at the 2014 Buffalo Experimental Philosophy Conference, at which five people from Waterloo philosophy and the Philosophical Science Lab presented research. John writes, “Overall, the conference was an awesome event, with people from all around the world​ (e.g. England, Sweden, Belgium, Japan, Canada, USA)​ presenting really exciting and valuable research at the intersection of science and philosophy, and getting lots of encouraging and constructive feedback. Here is a quick summary of the contributions by Waterloo philosophers (in chronological order as they appeared on the program):

• Janet Michaud and Ashley Keefner presented research on the controversial “Mr. Big” technique used by the RCMP​ (Royal Canadian Mounted Police)​ to elicit confessions in criminal cases. In this completely novel line of research, Janet and Ashley found that several aspects of the technique are widely judged to be coercive, which has potentially important implications for whether confessions elicited this way should be admissible in court.
• Sara Weaver presented research on judgments of personal identity. Building on prior work on identity judgments in the life and social sciences — and contrary to the consensus in the recent philosophical literature — Sara found that our concept of personal identity seems to allow for one person to be embodied in two entirely different places at a single time.
• Wesley Buckwalter presented research on the relationship attributions of ability and moral obligations, an important but previously unstudied aspect of moral psychology. Wesley found that being unable to to perform a certain task is perfectly consistent with being morally obligated to perform the task, strongly suggesting that “ought implies can” is not a principle of ordinary moral cognition.
• Finally, I presented research on the relationship between judgments of knowledge and reliability. I found that, according to the ordinary concept of knowledge, knowledge does not have to be reliably produced, which strongly suggests that reliabilist theories of knowledge are deeply revisionary.
• ​Also, at least some (but not all!) of us also ate Buffalo Wings in the very bar where Buffalo Wings were invented.​​

The X-phi gang passed along a great picture as well!

 

Heather Douglas writes, “The last week of August, I traveled to New Zealand at the invitation of Sir Peter Gluckman, Chief Science Advisor to New Zealand, to speak at the conference Science Advice to Governments.  It was a meeting that brought together leading science advisors from all over the world.  The conference was really fun and interesting, and I got to meet lots of great people and hear about the real challenges of giving science advice.  I also wrote three essays about and for the conference, one in the Guardian, one for the conference blog, and one for Evidence4Democracy. I spoke as part of the closing panel on modes of science advice.  Here I am with Mark Ferguson (Chief Science Advisor to Ireland) as part of that panel and asking a question as part of the audience.  It was definitely worth the trip!”

Doreen Fraser writes, “I just returned from a trip to Oxford and Florence.  In Florence, I participated in a workshop on dualities in string theory.  Dualities are philosophically interesting because they are cases in which, faced with theories that are mathematically distinct and apparently physically distinct, physicists arrive at the judgment that the theories are in fact not physically distinct.  The workshop provided an opportunity for philosophers with different backgrounds to analyze dualities from different perspectives and to share expertise.  While in Florence, I also saw some of Galileo’s telescopes and an interesting collection of instruments used for physics demonstrations in salons in the 18th and 19th centuries at the Museo Galileo.

Shannon Dea says, “Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been sharing my latest research on abortion and harm reduction with colleagues in the region. On September 11, at Western University, the Southwestern Ontario Feminism and Philosophy Workshop discussed my paper “Beyond Choice: An Ecological Approach to Abortion Access.” Last Friday, September 19, I delivered the same paper to the McMaster Department of Philosophy colloquium series. And two days earlier, at the Kitchener Public Library, as part of the One Book One Community events concerning Charlotte Gray’s The Massey Murder, I delivered a talk called “Women, Chastity, and the Law.”

Finally, here are a few photos from our Department’s welcome party!

Don’t forget, as always, you can see more news and check out upcoming events at our Department website.

Thanks for reading!

– Patricia Marino

Wednesday May 21, 2014

Another great campus photo by Vicki Brett.

Hi everyone,

First, we have some exciting news from recent PhD alum Paul Simard-Smith – he won a SSHRC post-doc! Paul writes, “I was happy to learn that I will be taking up a two year SSHRC post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, CT starting in September 2014. The research I plan to do during my postdoc expands and takes in new directions the work I did in my PhD dissertation at the University of Waterloo. The broad objective of my research at UCONN will be to contribute to a growing body of literature in the philosophy of logic that is attempting to develop a plausible version of logical pluralism—the claim that two or more logics are correct. There are two specific aspects of this project that I plan to make headway on. First, I will address an important problem that I think faces many interesting versions of logical pluralism: the problem of how conflicting logics can be correct without the disagreement between the conflicting logics being merely verbal. Second, the literature on logical pluralism to date has not examined the implications that logical pluralism has on other areas of inquiry outside the philosophy of logic. During my post-doc research I will remedy this by exploring some implications that I think logical pluralism has for legal and mathematical reasoning. I am grateful to the faculty in the philosophy department at the University of Waterloo who provided an excellent departmental climate for graduate students. In particular I am appreciative of the guidance and support of my thesis supervisor David DeVidi and my other thesis committee members Doreen Fraser and Tim Kenyon.” Our warmest congratulations, Paul!

Next, we’d like to share some great pictures from our awards ceremony.

Brian Orend giving the Second Year Prize to Xiangbo Kong.

Here I am (Patricia Marino) giving the the Third Year Prize to Carlos Fuentes.

Matt Doucet giving the Fourth Year Prize to Julia Hill.

Chris Lowry giving the Special Citizenship Prize to Paul O’Hagan

Matt Doucet awarding the Judy Wubnig Graduate Essay Prize in Philosophy to Ian MacDonald.

Tim Kenyon giving the Angus-Kerr Lawson paper prize to A. Y. Daring.

A couple of prize winners were sadly absent: First year prize: Amy Moore, and undergraduate Judy Wubnig Essay prize: Daniel Misiewicz.

Congratulations to all!

In other news, Paul Thagard writes, “I’ve talks at conferences on the social simulation of science (Leiden), roots of empathy (Toronto), and cognitive/functional approaches to psychology (Ghent).”

And Heather Douglas moderated a Town Hall Meeting (see the poster below) and ended up doing a CBC morning show interview as a result. The Faculty of Arts write-up is here; check it out!

Doreen writes with some excellent news: A few weeks ago Bright Starts, the on campus daycare, held its Grand Opening celebration, which was a happy occasion for a number of us in the Department. The new centre is housed in a brand new, purpose-built facility and is an amalgamation of the three original on campus daycare centres. I worked on this project as a member of various committees and the Board of Directors. When I began, my sons were 1 and 4 and enrolled in Paintin’ Place daycare on campus. Now that the new facility is complete, they are both too old for daycare, but I am pleased to see more daycare spaces available for infants and toddlers and campus. This is particularly important in the infant age group, where the doubling of the number of spaces from 10 to 20 represented a significant increase in the number of licensed spaces available in the entire Region of Waterloo (= only 196!). In his various roles with the Faculty Association, Dave also committed a substantial amount of time, energy and expertise to this project. Here is a photo of Dave receiving (on behalf of FAUW) a gift made by the children:

Shannon Dea, on sabbatical, writes, “I’ve just finished a whirlwind ten days here in Sheffield (and beyond). It began May 10 when I presented Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo to a full house at the local repertory cinema, The Showroom, as part of Sheffield Philosophy’s Philosophy at the Showroom public outreach series. The series combines film screenings with brief lectures and philosophical discussion. I chose Vertigo because it’s a film I’m often tempted to screen when I teach PHIL 202/WS 222 “Gender Issues” at Waterloo, but one that I never manage to squeeze into the course schedule. I think that Vertigo is a great “petri dish” in which to examine Simone de Beauvoir’s thesis that women are constructed as women, not born that way. For my mini-lecture, I sketched Beauvoir’s view and some of the little-known historical and literary connections between the film and Beauvoir’s 1949 book The Second Sex. The discussion that followed was vigourous and stimulating, and only came to a close when it did because the cinema needed the room for the next screening.

“The next day, I headed to Paris for back-to-back conferences at Collège de France and the Sorbonne. The first conference concerned Charles Sanders Peirce: Logic and Metaphysics. My talk there, “Peirce and Spinoza: Logical and Metaphysical Aspects,” was derived from the book on Peirce and Spinoza I’m working on while on sabbatical. The next day, at the Logic in Question IV workshop at Paris-Sorbonne, I took part in a panel discussion on ‘Peirce Today.’

“It was really exciting to get to walk the corridors and engage in philosophical discussion at two such venerable universities. Paris-Sorbonne is the descendent of the original Sorbonne University that was founded in the 13th century. Collège de France was founded in 1530 right across the street from the Sorbonne. Indeed, its location was intentionally provocative. The founders of Collège de France opposed the Jesuitical leadership and values of the Sorbonne and wished to provide, in full sight of the Sorbonne, a humanistic alternative. Since its founding to this very day, Collège de France continues to hold its faculty meetings during Sunday mass as a way of symbolically reaffirming its resistance to Jesuit orthodoxy. (Such a far cry from our friendly relationship with the philosophers across the street from us at Wilfrid Laurier!)

“Over the years, Collège de France has employed such eminent philosophers as Pierre Ramée, Pierre Gassendi (so many Pierres!), Henri Bergson and Michel Foucault, all of whose names and images are prominently displayed (along with those of other former faculty) around the tiny campus. Some years back, a few of us in the Philosophy Department at Waterloo took part in a Latin reading group, where we focused on some of Ramée’s work. Our recently retired colleague, Joe Novak went on to give conference talks and to publish on Ramée. While I was disappointed to miss Joe’s retirement party last month, seeing Ramée’s bust was a really pleasant reminder of my time spent declining Latin nouns with Joe. Here’s a photo of the bust from the Collège de France courtyard:

“Once back at Sheffield, I got to help welcome a gaggle of Canadian (and other) philosophers to the department for the conference on The Nature and Value of Childhood. While I haven’t engaged in much ex-pat socializing during my time abroad, it was a huge treat to get to hike in Peak District National Park with Samantha Brennan:

“Finally, yesterday, I was able to meet up with Wesley Buckwalter, who was visiting Sheffield from Waterloo to give a talk on experimental philosophy and the alleged intuition that ought implies can. True to Wesley’s empirical bent, he and I systematically examined the range of excellent hand-pulled local ales available in Sheffield pubs. Another blow for science struck by Waterloo Philosophy’s dedicated researchers!

Don’t forget, as always, you can see more news and check out upcoming events at our Department website.

Thanks for reading!

— Patricia Marino

Wednesday April 2, 2014

Hello everyone! Did you know? This blog is now over a year old. A big thank you to all the readers and followers and contributors!

I’m excited to say: lots of news today.

But first, a cardinal. Vicki Brett says, “I have been chasing this bird (or ones like it) around for nearly 5 years trying to get a picture of it! Every time I would bring my camera out he would disappear; finally, this past Sunday, Mr. Cardinal decided to pose for me.” Lovely!

We’ve had some great events over the past couple of weeks. Elijah Millgram (University of Utah) visited for a couple of days and spent lots of time meeting with students and faculty and also giving a colloquium talk , “Who Was the Author of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?” We were very happy to get to spend some time with him; Heather Douglas, who hosted the visit, says he had a great time in Waterloo as well.

An even bigger event was the annual PGSA conference! Ben Nelson, one of the organizers, says “the 21st annual Graduate Student Conference on Thursday March 27 and Friday March 28.  The papers submitted and accepted this year were excellent and the presentations were no less so. Many philosophical topics were up for discussion, from the philosophical analysis of recalcitrant emotions, to the politics and morality of authority and deference. Attendance and participation from our graduate students, faculty, retired professors, guests, keynote speaker and others made this conference a success.

“The keynote address was by Dr. Jamie Dreier from Brown University. His talk on ‘the normative theory of normativity’ was both stimulating and entertaining. Dr. Dreier discussed the problem of grounding our explanation of normativity, and the puzzles that arise when one adopts a deflationist approach to the truth of moral sentences.

“While an important part of a philosophy conference depends on the quality of  presentations, the PGSA also provides a rich social experience. Events during the conference included group meals for attendees on both Thursday and Friday and a conference dinner that took place at My Thai, a local Thai restaurant. And, as always, the students of the department came out in full force to discuss philosophy over drinks each evening.”

Jonathan Vanderhoek (University of Texas at Austin) presents at this year’s PGSA conference.

Dave DeVidi asks a question as keynote speaker Jamie Dreier looks on at this year’s PGSA conference.

In case you missed it, the full conference booklet has a recap of the schedule of the conference.  You can check it out here:  2014 Conference Program Booklet.”

I’ll add to that, a big thank you to all the people who worked to make the conference possible!

We have quite a bit of news from graduate students, including some papers accepted at conferences. Sandie Devries writes, “I will be giving a paper titled  “Of Scales and Bridges: the Naturalization of Feminist Neurophilosophy” at the Philosophy, Knowledge and Feminist Practices conferences in Alcala de Henares, Spain. I will also be presenting at the upcoming FEMMSS Science, Technology and Gender conference [here at UW] where I will be presenting a paper entitled: “Hardwired for Prejudice? A Neuro-ethical Account of Perceptual Preference.”

Graduate student Jamie Sewell will also be presenting at the FEMMSS Science, Technology and Gender conference, a paper on “Commercial Surrogacy and the Capabilities Approach.”

Graduate student Ramesh Prasad writes, “I’m happy to inform you that I have been appointed to the Ethics Committee of the Canadian Society of Transplantation for a two-year term. My structured philosophical training at Waterloo has greatly helped in contributing much more meaningfully to debates and discussions at the CST’s Annual Scientific Meetings, and to share my new-found knowledge and thinking methods (although I still have along way to go!) with my colleagues and peers at both departmental and national levels. Thanks to all the faculty at Waterloo for helping to make this possible.”

John Turri passes along this news: “Graduate student Peter Blouw co-authored a paper that was recently accepted at Philosophical Studies, which is one of the best generalist journals in the field. The paper documents and explains an interesting pattern in people’s normative judgments. In particular, it documents people’s tendency to engage in “excuse validation,” whereby judging that someone blamelessly broke a rule leads many people to claim, paradoxically, that no rule was broken at all! Excuse validation has implications for recent debates in normative ethics, epistemology and the philosophy of language, which rely on thought experiments that are perfectly designed to trigger excuse validation.”

Graduate student Rosalind Abdool is just back from Windsor where she co-organized and participated in National Health Ethics Week (NHEW) at Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare. “NHEW is a time during which everyone, including healthcare providers, patients, families and community members take part in educational events and other sessions aimed at raising awareness of health ethics issues across Canada,” Rosalind says. “Health ethics is about reflecting carefully on actions and decisions to determine what one ‘should’ do given particular circumstances. Some of the issues raised in health ethics include, and are certainly not limited to, patients choosing to live at risk, deciding between competing values, moral distress and burnout, the withdrawal/withholding of life sustaining treatment and the use of covert medication. Rosalind co-presented with her CCE colleagues at daily Ethics Grand Rounds on various topics, attended ‘meet and greet the ethicists,’ visited various units across the organization, and participated in town hall sessions.”

Awesome work, everyone, these all sound great!

We also have some faculty updates.

A big congratulations to Tim Kenyon on his promotion to full professor! Some of Tim’s seminar students organized a small surprise party! Philosophy undergraduate A. Y. Daring (third from right in the picture below) made some cupcakes and a beautiful cake that we all enjoyed.

Tim Kenyon also gave a talk recently, “Uptake, Testimony, and Content Preservation,” to the Department of Philosophy at Carleton University on March 21. Tim says “The faculty and students were excellent hosts, and the discussion session after the talk was really helpful.”

Paul Thagard just got back from Geneva where he attended a conference on the Ethics of the Human Brain Project, and next week is going to Leiden to discuss the Social Simulation of Science.

Last weekend Fraser attended a grad conference and a Foundations of Gauge Theories workshop at the University of California Irvine. “Gauge theories,” Doreen explains, “are a species of mathematical representation that have found applications in theories across physics, from electromagnetism to general relativity to quantum field theory in particle physics.  For philosophers, gauge theories complicate the project of interpreting physical theories because they typically introduce redundant mathematical structure.  A further complication is that informal mathematical presentations of gauge theories can make it difficult to sort out mathematical representations of the physical world from mere ‘descriptive fluff.’  The workshop was an excellent opportunity to get a snapshot of current philosophical work in this area.  I participated in a panel discussion with two mathematicians (Arthur Jaffe and Michael Muger) who offered their perspectives on the progress that has been made on formulating rigorous mathematical models of quantum field theories which are gauge theories and the obstacles—both mathematical and conceptual–standing in the way of completing the project.”

Don’t forget, we have an upcoming retirement celebration for Joe Novak this Friday April 11, including a colloquium talk by UW alum Dr. Paul Rusnock, University of Ottawa. Check out the details here.

Recent faculty publications include:

Heather Douglas, “Pure Science and the Problem of Progress,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A (2014). Heather says “The article is about the pure vs. applied science distinction, how it developed historically, and how it became canonical by mid-20th century.  I argue that despite its canonical status, there is no good conceptual basis for the distinction, and we can have a clearer sense of scientific progress if we reject the distinction.  And I talk about Kuhn.”

Tim Kenyon, “False polarization: Debiasing as applied social epistemology,” Synthese (2014): 1-19.

Paul Thagard (2014). “The self as a system of multilevel interacting mechanisms.” Philosophical Psychology, 27, 145-163.

Don’t forget, as always, you can see more news and check out upcoming events at our Department website.

Best wishes to all, and thanks for reading!

— Patricia Marino

Wednesday February 12, 2014

Hi everyone, it’s the week before reading week and time when everyone starts saying “time flies” and “look, it’s actually staying lighter in the afternoon.”

This week we have some great graduate student news. First, grad student Teresa Branch-Smith writes “I recently started an internship working as a philosopher-in-residence at the architecture firm Philip Beesley Architect Inc. (PBAI). I sought out this partnership because I think it is important to consider alternative domains where philosophy can be applied. PBAI not only bids on potential architecture projects but also does synthetic biology installations typically in science centres and art galleries. My job focuses on writing and editing essays for their upcoming monograph. In particular, the interactive robotics installations have features meant to imitate living systems prompting the audience to question ‘what it means to be living’. This intersection of philosophy and exhibit design relates to my research of creating more engaging science exhibits by making underlying philosophical questions explicit. More information about PBAI can be found here.” Check out this great photo of Teresa in the studio:

Teresa at the studio at PBAI

Also, our graduate student Rosalind Abdool participated in a two week residency exchange at Covenant Health in Edmonton, AB. She worked with Ethics Services on ethics consultations, policy development, and strategic planning. Rosalind describes this experience: “I had a truly wonderful time exploring the differences and similarities between ethics services and health ethics laws in Edmonton with health ethics programs in Ontario. I had the pleasure of working with some very talented and passionate health ethics advocates on various issues, including smoking policies, end-of-life challenges, ethics education strategies, wait list concerns and other dilemmas.” Rosalind also presented to the psychiatric unit at Covenant Health on her dissertation topic – deception in health care, and the moral justification for its use in particular situations.

And grad student Jamie Sewell says, “I have been accepted to present at the XV International Association of Women Philosophers (IAPh) Symposium in Spain from June 24th-27th, 2014. I will be presenting on Walter R. Fisher’s ‘narrative rationality’ in paper titled, “Narrative Rationality, Identity, and the Social Contexts of Evaluation.” Here’s the abstract: “In Human Communication as Narration: Toward a Philosophy of Reason, Value, and Action, Walter R. Fisher constructs and applies what he calls the ‘narrative paradigm’. With this, he seeks to develop a set of evaluative criteria by which the reasoning in narratives can be critically assessed in order to determine whether or not the value(s) espoused in a story warrants the assent of audiences. He provides two criteria, coherence and fidelity, by which to make judgements about the reasoning in stories. His criterion of coherence is concerned mainly with whether or not, upon critical examination, a story “hangs together”. Fisher argues that his second criterion, fidelity, can be used to examine whether or not a story is ‘truthful’ by assessing the implications of adopting the values offered by a story. In this paper, I aim to explore Fisher’s assumptions with respect to the construction and application of his criterion ‘fidelity’, through an exposition of the evaluative questions by which he suggests that stories or narratives can be judged as being ‘truthful’. I am interested in the pervasive nature of narrative as constitutive of identities and how this can problematize a person’s ability to judge the reasoning in support of the values presented a story based on a logic of ‘good reasons’. Specifically, I am interested in whether or not his conception of fidelity makes the reasoning in narratives more accessible to those who are not trained in formal or informal logics, and whether or not Fisher’s paradigm gives us new and appropriate tools by which we can reason through narratives that are constructed within complex social structures of power, domination, and competing interests and values. I will begin by briefly fleshing-out what I take to be Fisher’s overall project in terms of what he claims the narrative paradigm offers audiences which cannot be gained from employing traditional logics. Next, I will focus on Fisher’s conception of fidelity, in order to clarify the facets of Fisher’s account that may prove beneficial to feminist projects of inclusion and participation, while highlighting the facets of fidelity that problematize its use as an evaluative criterion for assessing the reasoning in narratives given the qualitative difference between experience and narrative; the role of ideology and power relations in determining or limiting the options and framing of narratives which come to bear on the experiences and identities of members of societies; and misrepresentation or under-representation of experiences of traditionally marginalized peoples by which a member of a marginalized group is supposed to judge the truth and value of stories.”

Great work, y’all!

Heather Douglas writes to share a link to a video of her and Carla Fehr in Ottawa last October, summarizing their sessions at the Science and Society Conference.

Don’t forget: our Doreen Fraser is going to be keynote speaker at the Philosophy of Logic, Math, and Physics graduate student conference at Western. The deadline is coming up for submission, so if you’re a grad student, check it out here!

Also coming up soon is the deadline to submit to the upcoming FEMMSS5/CSWIP 2014:  Science, Technology, and Gender: Challenges and Opportunities. Right here at the University of Waterloo!

Heather is off to the AAAS this week, and Rosalind and I are off to the Central APA in Chicago — maybe we will see some of you there!

Don’t forget, as always, you can see more news and check out upcoming events at our Department website.

Best wishes to all, and thanks for reading!

— Patricia Marino

Wednesday October 2, 2013

Hi everyone,

It is with great pleasure that we would like to congratulate our Department Administrative Assistant and Grad Coordinator Debbie Dietrich on her 25th anniversary at Waterloo! Some of my colleagues who’ve worked closely with Debbie over the years wanted to share their thoughts on this happy occasion. Our chair Dave DeVidi writes, “It’s hard to believe that it has reached the stage where Debbie is one of only two people in the department who have been here longer than me. While she’s important in the work life of everyone in the department, I’ve probably had as much chance to work with her as anyone: she’s been a key administrator for 15 of my 17 years here, and I worked closely with her for the six years I’ve spent as graduate officer and the past 15 months as Chair. There are lots of good things to be said, but maybe it is appropriate to say again what I said to the Dean about her 25th Anniversary at Waterloo:

What makes Debbie so valuable to the department is the personal touch she brings to all aspects of her work, and the personal connections this has allowed her to make all over campus. Has some unusual situation come up? Debbie will know exactly who to call to help solve it, and will know the person on the other end of the line. Is a visitor coming to the department? That person will already like the place when they arrive, because they’ll have been dealing with Debbie to make arrangements. Generations of grad students have known just where to go for a problem solver and a sympathetic ear—not to mention generations of department chairs. We’re lucky to have her.

Our recent chair Tim Kenyon seconds this: “Debbie has adapted to many changes in personnel, policies, processes and technologies during that time; but her collegiality and warm professionalism have been constants. She was an invaluable supportive colleague to me during my time as Chair.”

Brian Orend also described Debbie as “invaluable” to him during his tenure as Grad Officer: “She helped bring me up to speed on a whole range of rules and processes, even in the face of a sea-change in procedures about grad funding. Together with the Committee, Debbie was instrumental in helping bring together the biggest incoming grad student cohort in memory. I feel that Debbie combines polished professional discretion with useful frank advice. She has always been a total pro: always getting the job done yet ever with a fun attitude and an approachable demeanour that makes everyone’s job easier. She has also, of her own generous accord, provided me with additional help in connection with International Studies over the years.”

Doreen Fraser, current Grad Officer, says “Debbie is not only the one who helps faculty and graduate students navigate paperwork and University regulations, but also someone who keeps on top of what people are doing outside of the University (with extracurricular activities, partners, and children) and who offers support which goes well beyond help with administration. Thank you and congratulations, Debbie!” I know from years working with Debbie that she brings to our Department an extraordinary ability — to combine the formal and administrative aspects of her job with a kindness and friendliness that makes our Department a warm and connected place. It wouldn’t be the same without you, Debbie. Thank you so much, and congratulations on your 25th!

In graduate student news, some of our MA students, Teresa Branch, Sandie DeVries, Marian Davies, and Jamie Sewell, have had a poster accepted for the 2013 Science and Society Conference in Ottawa. The title is “Scientific information, misinformation and disinformation: The perils of open access and trust.” They write in the abstract, “The aim of this research is to explore the relationship between how information is presented by ‘science authorities’ and the public. This relationship is fraught with concern from science communicators as to the best means to convey the information, the public and their ability to understand the concepts, and the social position afforded to science as the sole authority with which to accurately measure the world. With the exponential increase in available sources of information via the internet, it is becoming increasingly necessary for the public to be able to critically analyze these sources and discern what science is reliable in order to make informed decisions about science policy. By looking at the recent controversy surrounding the exhibition, Sex: A Tell-all Exhibition at the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa, we will explore 3 facets of science communication and the dissemination of knowledge. We will analyze the means with which the exhibit attempted to reach the audience, the inherent concerns regarding the authority of science on the topic, and public discussion surrounding the exhibit via the internet. This example, serves as a means of showcasing the challenges of publicizing science as well as ways to harness this intersection of ideas to acknowledge biases and create a more balanced and better informed public.” Congrats to all!

Heather Douglas writes, “This past Saturday (Sep. 28), I gave the Warren Steinkraus Lecture on Human Ideals at SUNY Oswego. I spoke about “Ideals for Responsible Science in Democratic Societies” and we had a wide-ranging discussion about the role of scientists, collective responsibility, dual-use research, and public interest science, among other things. I also got to enjoy lovely Oswego, situated on Lake Ontario, on a spectacular day, with my host and tour guide, Brad Wray.” Heather also passed along some great pictures:

Joe Novak presented a paper (“Sawyer and Consciousness”) at a conference entitled Science Fiction: The Interdisciplinary Genre. Joe says, “The conference was held at McMaster University September 13-15 2013 and it celebrated the donation of the papers of Robert Sawyer to the Library at McMaster which also houses the Bertrand Russell Archives. Robert Sawyer is probably the most significant SF writer in Canada; more information on him can be found at http://www.sfwriter.com/. More information on the conference can be found at: http://sfwriter.com/mcmaster.htm. I also attended the annual Medieval Philosophy Conference at U of T, held on September 20-21. This is an international conference featuring presentations by established scholars as well as some very talented doctoral students.”

Graduate student Rosalind Abdool and I together presented a paper we co-authored at The Pittsburgh Area Philosophy Colloquium. Our paper, “Utilitarianism, Intuitions, Rationality and Neuroscience,” challenged Peter Singer’s claims that neuro-scientific results were evidence for the rationality of utilitarianism over alternatives and argued on behalf of a pluralist approach. We had a great time meeting and talking with other Pittsburg area philosophers. Here’s a photo of us just after our talk:

Dave DeVidi has some serious thoughts about science and academic freedom. “On September 17,” he says, “I took part in a public town hall in uptown Waterloo that is the first public event in Get Science Right, an initiative by the Canadian Association of University Teachers to raise public awareness and discussion of “the public impact of the crisis in science and research policy in Canada.” About 50 people attended, and the event was filmed by one of the national current affairs program as part of an investigation they are doing of the issues we were discussing.

“The other panelists (Melanie Campbell, a physicist from Waterloo and Jeffrey Jones, a neuroscientist from Wilfrid Laurier University) spoke passionately about the harmful implications of the defunding of basic, curiosity-driven research for the long term interests of the country. Since they are both from STEM backgrounds, I raised issues of particular concern to the humanities and social sciences—such as the ill-conceived changes to Library and Archives Canada and the killing of the long form census, both of which will prevent Arts researchers from effectively doing the research that a democratic society will want to see done if its interested in intelligently governing itself.

“A major topic of discussion was the harmful effects of all the gag orders imposed at the federal level on government scientists, librarians and archivists, and others. Their harm to good democratic decision-making is obvious. But the climate of silencing and retribution has other side effects. It’s an alarming trend among university administrators to see their role in terms of “keeping the university’s message focused and positive,” including keeping research that runs contrary to government policy from gaining much publicity—which, to my mind, is a rather grave failure to understand what universities are actually for. Which will be the first university administration to try to put gag orders on their faculty of the sort government departments have put on their scientists? It may happen sooner than we think, so faculty should be on their toes and be willing to put a stop to it when someone tries.”

Upcoming activities:

Tim Kenyon says, “On Thursday I will be giving a presentation to uW Library staff outlining some of the common uses and abuses of research output impact measures. The title is ‘Research measures and rankings.'”

Don’t forget you can see more news and check out upcoming events at our Department website. Our Facebook group is now for anyone who wants to keep in touch — just send a request to join. And why not follow this blog by email? Just use the gadget on the right hand side!

As always, thanks for reading!

— Patricia Marino

Wednesday September 18, 2013

Hi everyone and welcome to the start of fall term, always a time of intense activity. Before we get to the news-news, we’d like to take a moment to remember Ardeth Wood. Our chair Dave DeVidi writes:

It has been a decade since one of the most traumatic events in the history of the department. Those who were here at the time will remember the shock and grief that gripped the department when Ardeth Wood disappeared on August 6, 2003. For those of you who never had a chance to meet Ardeth: She was a PhD student—making good headway in the early stages of the program, well liked and with many close friends in the department, collegial, involved, active, and full of promise—when she went home to Ottawa for a short vacation with her family. Here is a link to one story about the anniversary.”  Ardeth’s memory is honored in the life of our Department by the Ardeth Wood Memorial Bursary; as Dave says, “None of us who knew her will forget her.”

The main happening around our department recently was, of course, our welcome party. Our current Associate Chair for grad studies, Doreen Fraser, writes: “the first week of September we welcomed 16 new graduate students to the Department–9 MA students and 7 PhD students. Their interests are distributed across the full range of research areas in the Department; some are continuing their education with us at uWaterloo, and others have come from universities across the country.  The day of departmental orientation sessions was capped off by a welcome party in Dave DeVidi’s back yard.” A lovely event — and we are thrilled to be welcoming so many great new students!

Current graduate student Peter Blouw reports on various recent research travels: “In August, I presented a poster on evaluations of rule-breaking and the pragmatics of indirect speech at the 6th Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress in Boulder, Colorado. The poster was based on some experimental philosophy work I’ve been doing with John Turri, and it was really interesting to present this material in a setting where there’s naturally a bit more of a focus on the aspects of the research related to ethics rather than cognitive science. I got some good feedback and ideas about project, and I really enjoyed taking in the other talks and posters at the conference. I also went to Berlin in August for the annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. I presented a poster based on some work I’ve been doing in Chris Eliasmith’s lab on distributional models of lexical semantics, and it was good chance to meet other people who are also interested in this topic. Over 1000 people attended the conference, so there were a lot of opportunities to learn about recent developments in cognitive science research.” Great work, Peter!

Brian Orend says the second edition of his book is out! Check out the cover, then read all about it at Broadview press!

Heather Douglas spoke on Monday at the Stand Up for Science Rally in Kitchener about the state of Canadian public science.  A news clip on the rally can be seen here. Heather says, “it was good to come out and meet with others concerned about Canadian science in the public interest.” The discussion continued Tuesday with a panel discussion including Dave DeVidi, at an event called called Get Science R!ght on Tuesday, September 16 at the Waterloo Public Library. Dave says, “This event was organized by the Canadian Association of University Teachers, and is the first in a nationwide series of events to ‘discuss the public impact of the crisis in science and research policy in Canada.’ It was hosted by Craig Norris of the local CBC radio morning show, and the other panelists were Melanie Campbell of Waterloo’s Physics and Astronomy department and Jeffrey Jones, a neuroscientist from Wilfrid Laurier.” Since this was just as our blog was going to press, we’ll have more details from Dave next week.

Doreen Fraser just got back from a workshop on the applicability of mathematics in physics at Simon Fraser University.  Doreen says, “The other speakers were Nic Fillion (SFU) and Bob Batterman (Pittsburgh); the participants came from philosophy and applied mathematics departments at SFU and UBC.  One of the issues addressed was how to explain why mathematics is applicable in the ways in which it is in contemporary physics.  The starting point for providing such an explanation is to respond to physicist Eugene Wigner’s infamous skeptical assessment that ‘[t]he miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve.’ A common thread running through the talks was that applied mathematics represents reality in only very minimal respects.  This feature of the examples analyzed had diverse causes: the need to engineer a problem that is tractable using methods available to applied mathematicians (Fillion), the introduction of idealizations (Batterman), and that the applicability of a common mathematical formalism across a wide range of domains reflects the fact that the physical conditions for applicability of the formalism are very minimal (Fraser). One strand of the discussion that I will be following up on is whether the identification of causal structures (as characterized by some account of causation) could play any role in my case studies.”

Tim also just presented a talk: on Friday September 13, to the  Department of Philosophy colloquium at McMaster University, titled “Oral history and the epistemology of testimony.”

Steve Weinstein is back after recording an album, set for release in early December. Steve adds, “in my absence, I entered an FQXI (Foundational Questions Institute) essay contest on “Questioning the Foundations: Which of Our Basic Physical Assumptions Are Wrong?” and tied for second with Hawking collaborator, cosmologist George Ellis. Essay is here.” Welcome back, Steve!

Carla is enjoying her first time teaching Intro (Phil 110A) at Waterloo.  She says, “I am really excited about this class. What struck me right away was the incredible diversity of students in the room.  I love the idea of people of so many different races and ethnicities coming together to explore philosophy. I am looking forward to the rest of the semester.” I second that: I always enjoy teaching Intro classes, and I especially enjoy them at Waterloo where the students bring such an interesting mix of perspectives.

The Philosophy Graduate Student Association (PGSA) welcomed the incoming grad students and celebrated the return of our continuing grad students after orientation with a visit to the Grad House. The grad students had a great time getting to know each other and sharing in the tradition of spending time at the Grad House on Fridays! Here are a couple of excellent pictures:

Our outgoing PGSA president, Rosalind Abdool, says: “It is with great pleasure that I would like to present the Philosophy Graduate Student Association executive for the 2013-2014 academic year:

President: Nathan Haydon
Administrator: Ashley Keefner
Treasurer: Sara Weaver
PhD Representative:  Jay Michaud
MA Representative:   Nicholas Ferenz
GSA Representative:  Cristina Balaita

Ben Nelson, Ayo Ogunshola, Dylon McChesney have been appointed as our 2014 UWaterloo Graduate Conference organizers, and Peter Blouw will continue in the role of graduate colloquium series coordinator.

Rosalind adds, “I would like to thank all those who made this past year such a wonderful one – especially the former exec, including Sara, Lindsey, Ashley, Nathan and Ben, as well as the conference organizers, Nathan and Ben, and our colloquium series organizer, Peter. A huge thank you to Jim for all of his advice, expertise and contributions to the PGSA. Lastly, thank you to all department members as well for all of your continued support of the grad students!”

Finally, while this is generally a blog about what-has-happened, we’re going to add listings of activities outside the department that we’re involved in, in case any one wants to join in:

Paul Thagard says that on Sept. 20, he will be giving the Killam Lecture at Dalhousie, and on Oct 11, he’ll be speaking at a conference in Delft, Netherlands, on cognition, complexity, and urban planning.

Rosalind Abdool and I will be presenting our co-authored paper “Utilitarianism, Intuitions, Rationality and Neuroscience,” this upcoming Saturday at the Pittsburgh Area Philosophy Colloquium.

Recent Faculty Publications

Matt writes, “Recent Waterloo Philosophy graduate Dr. Rachel McKinnon– now a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow at the University of Calgary– and I have just published a paper in Philosophical Psychology together called “This paper took too long to write: A puzzle about overcoming weakness of will.”

My paper “Moral Coherence and Value Pluralism just came out in the Canadian Journal of Philosophy. Here’s a link to the open access version.

Don’t forget you can see more news and check out upcoming events at our Department website. Our Facebook group is now for anyone who wants to keep in touch — just send a request to join. As always, I hope everyone is having a great fall, and thanks for reading!

— Patricia Marino

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Hi everyone, our big Department news this week was our wonderful PGSA graduate student conference!  More details about that in a bit; first I have a few other things to tell you.

Jason West

First, I pass along an alum update from Jason West, who completed his PhD in our Department in 2003.  Jason says “after completing the PhD, I taught at St. Jerome’s for a year and then came to Edmonton to teach philosophy at Newman Theological College. I’ve been here for 8 years. After a year as Academic Dean I was appointed President in November of 2012. Hope all is well at Waterloo.”  Congratulations on your appointment, and thanks for keeping in touch!

Also, I happened to be corresponding with Wendy O’Brien, who is in the last stages of completing her PhD thesis with us, and she mentioned this — I thought it might be of general interest.  Wendy says, “I became involved as a founding member and co-ordinator of an organization that is putting on conferences in interdisciplinary studies at sites in Canada, Spain, France and Mexico ( and it looks like we might be going to India.) Not sure if you have students or colleagues who might be interested in the themes we are exploring. Our next conferences are in May (13th – 27th) co-hosted with Humber here in Toronto and then in Barcelona in June. They can be found at http://alternative-academia.net/ocs-2.3.5/

In more general Department news, some of our members have been having a reading group on structural realism in the philosophy of science.  The group meets every Thursday afternoon in the lounge and consists of half a dozen grad students and faculty members.  Graduate student Nathan Haydon explains:

“Structural realism claims that our best scientific theories tell us about the structure of the world. But what is meant by structure? And does the apparent retention of structure across theory change really provide a connection to what the world is like?  In our reading group, we began with John Worrall’s paper “Structural Realism: The Best of Both Worlds” that led to the modern resurgence of structural realism. By appealing to the continuity of structure across theory change, Worrall argues that the realist can account for the success of science while giving credit to the radical theory change that seems to occur on the level of theoretical entities.

While Worrall lays the groundwork for such a position, the job remains for the structural realist to fill in the details. We continued by looking at several articles that offer more specific accounts of what is meant by structure. These included “The Intelligibility of the Universe” by Michael Redhead and “Remodeling Structural Realism” by Steven French and James Ladyman. Both argue for structure as a type of shared mathematical relation, either shared at a more abstract level between scientific theories or shared between theory and data models, respectively.  Following concerns raised while reading some of Doreen Fraser’s current work, however, it is not clear that a shared mathematical structure can necessarily be given the same physical interpretation in different applications and thus provide a unique account of how the world is. Is this something the structural realist can agree with? If not, can the structural realist offer a response? The group is now focusing on responding to these questions.”

Finally, the PGSA conference!  The PGSA held its 20th annual Graduate Student Conference on Friday March 22 and Saturday March 23.  PGSA president Rosalind Abdool and co-organizer Nathan Haydon write “The quality of the papers submitted and accepted this year was outstanding and the presentations were philosophically engaging and thought-provoking. There were lively discussions on various philosophical topics, including the role of desires in decision-making, a new account of weakness of will and different kinds of moral responsibility, just to name a few. Attendance and participation from our graduate students, faculty, retired professors, guests, keynote speaker and others made this conference a huge success.

Avery Archer and Kian Mintz-Woo engage in some philosophical discussion at the PGSA conference.

Christa Johnson delivers her paper at the PGSA conference.

The keynote address was by Dr. Nomy Arpaly from Brown University. Her talk on “strong will” was philosophically stimulating and Dr. Arpaly had a wonderful charm and humor that captivated the audience. Dr. Arpaly discussed concerns about controlling our will and our ability to be responsible for our wills, especially in light of studies that reveal how “willpower” can be manipulated by external factors.

While an important part of a philosophy conference depends on the quality of  presentations, the PGSA also provides a rich social experience. Events during the conference included group meals for attendees on both Friday and Saturday and a conference dinner that took place at Masala Bay, an excellent local Indian restaurant. PGSA members also provided places for speakers to stay (even including a few home-cooked meals), transportation to and from the airport, and were always around to discuss philosophy over a few drinks in the evening. We heard nothing but good things from the speakers.”

In case you missed it, the full conference booklet has some great photos in which the organizers attempted to recreates photos from the past, in honor of this being the 20th year.  You can check it out here:  2013 Conference Program Booklet.  You can also see more great photos.

Rosalind would like to extend a huge thank you to both Nathan Haydon and Benjamin Nelson for their very hard work organizing this year’s conference, and thanks to everyone else involved in the conference who made it an overwhelming success!

Don’t forget, as always, you can see more news and check out upcoming events at our Department website.

Have a great week,

–Patricia Marino